Students think the textbook is boring. They come to class unprepared. They haven’t done the reading and/or they don’t have anything meaningful to add to discussion. Then they complain about their grades. It’s easy to complain about the state of young people today and how they seem to think that what you assume are basic […]
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A class provides structure
Now that so much information is available on the internet, this question arises more and more frequently. Why go to university? Why pay all that money to learn things you could learn on your own using resources available on the internet and in public libraries. Couldn’t you just do this stuff yourself? Perhaps with the […]
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The importance of quitting
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · The importance of quitting Quitting has a bad rap. Winners never quit and quitters never win. When the going gets tough, the tough keep going. I can see how you don’t want to give up at the first hurdle, but sometimes quitting is actually a good option. The option […]
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You can ignore the grading, reprise
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · You can ignore the grading, reprise This post refers to the break between the first and second semesters of an academic year, which in the Northern Hemisphere tends to incorporate the Christmas holidays. Often the exams and assignments that come in at the end of the semester need to […]
Read More »Holiday parties: turning dread into opportunity
It’s that time of year. No matter what you celebrate (if anything) you are going to be invited to parties. Many of these parties will involve talking to people you don’t know very well — the husband of your department chair, the best friend from out of town, the new neighbor from a few streets […]
Read More »Writing essays is not a generic skill
Chris Atherton‘s most recent blog post makes a great contribution to debates about assessment, and essay writing in particular. Getting Students to Build Things Out of Concrete (Examples, that is) Go read it and come back. This post started as a comment that got out of hand. I’ll wait. Tum te dum te dum. Hi, […]
Read More »Are you letting gremlins ruin your job?
No one will fund that research. Find a sexier topic. One there’s a bit of buzz about. And make it something useful. You’re really behind the times. There’s all kinds of educational technology out there. Why aren’t you using it? Get innovative. Update that course. No one reads academic journals. What are you even bothering […]
Read More »What happened to the Life of the Mind?
For many people what’s attractive about an academic career is the opportunity to be intellectually engaged: with students, with books, with colleagues, etc. Popular cultural representations of academia twist this into an image of the professor with his mind on higher things and detached from reality. Either way what gets called “the life of the mind” […]
Read More »PhD programs are not career training
A degree may be necessary but it is never sufficient
There is no job for which an educational qualification is enough to get you hired.
There is no job for which an educational qualification provides all the necessary skills and knowledge.
A degree, whatever it is, is always but one piece of a complex puzzle.
Read More »Shifting the career focus in doctoral education
On Wednesday November 17th, 2010, I spoke to graduate students at Carleton University about careers after grad school. This post is based on part of what I said. It is directed not only to graduate students but also to the faculty that advise them. For most doctoral students, the tenure-track position is the daisy in […]
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I don’t like the term “unconference”
Call me an unreformed social constructionist but I think language has power. Calling these really cool new types of conferences things like “unconferences” “camps” and whatever just cedes the definition of “conference” to people whose primary goal seems to be to bore us to death. What is the purpose of the conference? There is plenty […]
Read More »misunderstanding copyright
Copyright has been in the news recently thanks to an incident in which a profit-making magazine reprinted an article they found on the internet without the authors permission. (No, I’m not linking. They’ve had enough publicity for their nefarious deeds.) When the author challenged the editor, the response included what seems to be a common […]
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